The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

AtomicHorror

wolfsbane wrote: »

Here's a couple for you, since all my previous referals were rejected as essays or reviews:
http://www.grisda.org/origins/52007.pdf

http://www.grisda.org/origins/54005.pdf
I take you you agree that rapid post-Flood diversification is a part of the creationist argument?

http://www.grisda.org/origins/60006.pdf

I take you you agree that rapid post-Flood diversification is a part of the creationist argument?

I take it you agree that Irreducible Complexity is a part of the creationist argument?

I'll post more from other disciplines later, DV.

Thanks for the links. Will have a read. When do these date from?

I will say that after reading the intro to the first article that they off to a rather bad start in terms of convincing a sceptic. They assume a priori that baramin exist and don't seem to be making an effort to actually test that in itself. Perhaps that is well outside of the scope of the article, but it would make for a good research project.

2Scoops

wolfsbane wrote: »

Here's a couple for you, since all my previous referals were rejected as essays or reviews:
http://www.grisda.org/origins/52007.pdf

Wow, this is an actual investigation. Ferns from a family of ferns can be hybridized. Nothing to do with creationism though. And absolutely no evidence it has anything to do with the Flood as alluded to by the author. Is this the best evidence you have for creation along with the similar snake-breeding study? Is that it? This isn't evidence of creation at all.

wolfsbane wrote: »

http://www.grisda.org/origins/54005.pdf

Essay.

wolfsbane wrote: »

http://www.grisda.org/origins/60006.pdf

Essay. You're really not getting this 'science' thing, are you? :pac:

wolfsbane

AtomicHorror said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
We have the Book, and we have a spiritual awareness (if we are honest enough to admit it) that naturalism cannot account for.
Once, naturalism could not account for the sunrise. So they made a God of it. We are willing to try and find our answers, just as those early scientists came to understand the nature of the sun. You would rather we stopped looking. Like the Sun worshippers, you are afraid.

I would rather you found the answer, just as I did. But by all means keep looking. That's much better than pretending the spirit world does not exist.

Your belief in the 'Naturalism of the Gaps' is poignant.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
No, we do not have to explain how God created it all out of nothing, or how He could be self-existent. Those are outside the realm of science - because God Himself created the laws of science. He governs them, not them Him.
If you would call creationism "science", you absolutely do have to explain these things. That's the cost of brining the fight onto this field. There are no satisfactory givens. There is no end to the questions. If creationism disagrees, it is not science, just cargo cult science.

That would mean non-creationist science has to explain how energy/matter came to be, or it's not science in your view. I don't have such exacting standards for science - it is enough that it has to explain what things are, how they work and what laws are involved.

Is the evolution model not science because it refuses to deal with abiogenesis? Seems so, if the creation model isn't because it doesn't deal with what happened before Day One of creation.

Do all your colleagues share your view on this?

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
So one cannot approach God scientifically. Reality is more than science. Science is just a part of reality.
Science is the study of all that can be observed by people. By sight, by smell, taste, touch, sound. By devices that convert what we cannot observe into what we can. By what we feel emotionally, spiritually, by what we believe. All observation. Science is the sum of all observation.

That's a new one for me. I never understood science to deal with the spirit world. I know of psychic research/ghost-hunters and the like - but I thought that was psuedo-science, since in my experience the spirit world cannot be measured by material devices. But if you say so.

Using your definitions, the spirit world can be scientifically probed. Specific answers to specific prayers. Imparted knowledge that is not gained by reasoning or material report. These are clear indicators of a spirit world.

What is reality?

What is real that can never be observed directly or indirectly?

The spirit world is observed - by living things. It cannot be observed by instruments.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
It would be a real mess to try to apply science to the spiritual realm.
And yet we have used it to show that all those spiritual realms that you yourself dismiss are false. Psychic powers, prescience, necromancy, tarot, horoscopes... I'm sure it suits you to accept that science has fully explained these things in naturalistic terms.

Not at all. Most of it is trickery, I'm sure. But I've lived long enough to know the reality of some of it - both good and evil. God did not forbid us to contact the spirits because they are not real - but because they are only too real, and malicious.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
But he wants to prevent kids from being theists, especially from becoming Christians.
Really? Or maybe his atheism just prevented him from putting a familiar spiritualism into his story. Perhaps he thought that would be rather hypocritical of him.

No, he was quite open about his purpose - at least until is threatened box-office receipts:
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/11/philip_pullman_realizes_underm.html

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
It seems he knows materialistic atheism cannot account for the reality kids will encounter. He therefore opts for pantheism as an explanation of the spiritual dimension that is evident to all but the wilfully blind.
He also put talking bears in there.

All part of an excellent yarn. And an excellent yarn is just the vehicle with which to indoctrinate kids. As a story, I found the series lived up to the hype - utterly memorable, complex characters and plot. A really good read.

Joseph Goebbels would be green with envy.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
I agree. Test revelation by seeing if it works in practise - does it produce goodness in the person who believes it? Does the God who it reveals answer prayer, or is he always missing?
Delusion can produce good also. Confirmation bias will lead the deluded to see their prayers answered. Though they'll ignore the cases that don't quite fit or which never were answered and call it the mysterious and ineffable will of God. You cannot test the difference on that basis.

One certainly needs self-examination to guard against self-deception. But it is not a big problem to the honest enquirer. We are discussing things on this board, in the knowledge that we are not imagining ourselves doing it.

To really test answered prayer, all we need is to be specific enough to rule out naturally occuring uncommon events.

Pahu

darjeeling wrote: »

All you have done so far is paste great tracts of creoweb - as indeed you have done all over the internet. This is called spamming.



And this is not even true. A number of people took issue when you posted/pasted this, claiming terrestrial vertebrate fossils in the Cambrian:



And where did you get this from? Here:



So no scientists support your claim - you just made these fossils up! And the people who called you on it weren't arguing with scientists - they were arguing with you.

When I shared that, I also wondered about the dinosaurs, birds, reptiles, since I had not heard that before. As you point out, others have claimed they aren't found in the Cambrian Explosion. So there is a difference of opinion about that and it may be true. But to accuse me of making those fossils up is erroneous. I just shared the information from that site. Why the author included terrestrial vertebrate fossils in the Cambrian, I don't know. Perhaps there is evidence supporting that claim that we are unaware of.

http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/explosion.htm

Pahu, I have edited out the non-original content you supplied. Since you did include sources and a link "it is by the Grace of God," and that I am a nice person, that you are being given this one last chance.

There will be no next chance. Follow the rules of this forum.

Post anything other than original content, which includes links to the swathes of texts you want to share with us, and you become history here.

I do not have the time or desire to spend editing your posts.

AtomicHorror

Pahu wrote: »

When I shared that, I also wondered about the dinosaurs, birds, reptiles, since I had not heard that before. As you point out, others have claimed they aren't found in the Cambrian Explosion. So there is a difference of opinion about that and it may be true. But to accuse me of making those fossils up is erroneous. I just shared the information from that site. Why the author included terrestrial vertebrate fossils in the Cambrian, I don't know. Perhaps there is evidence supporting that claim that we are unaware of.

But let's say that there were no such fossils in the Cambrian strata. The fact remains that nearly all animal phyla made their first appearance in the fossil record at essentially the same time, at what is called the "Cambrian Explosion."

Scientists have found that these early fossils exhibit more anatomical body designs than exist today, and that early animals, the trilobites, had eyes as fully developed as their counterparts today.

Many of the Cambrian fauna, still survive today, all looking much like they did before the “explosion.” The prominent British evolutionist, Richard Dawkins, comments, "... [W]e find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history."....

http://www.straight-talk.net/evolution/explosion.htm

Aside from the first couple of sentences, this is just a direct rip from the site linked. Please stop spamming these blocks of text. You already posted the above on this thread.

Flamed Diving

wolfsbane wrote: »

Here's a couple for you, since all my previous referals were rejected as essays or reviews:
http://www.grisda.org/origins/52007.pdf

http://www.grisda.org/origins/54005.pdf
I take you you agree that rapid post-Flood diversification is a part of the creationist argument?

http://www.grisda.org/origins/60006.pdf

I take you you agree that rapid post-Flood diversification is a part of the creationist argument?

I take it you agree that Irreducible Complexity is a part of the creationist argument?

I'll post more from other disciplines later, DV.

Erm, they are better than most of the stuff that is posted here, but they are not really decent science papers. Take a look at the ones I posted, as examples. There is more data and statistics than there are words, thats what it is all about.

wolfsbane

2Scoops wrote: »

Wow, this is an actual investigation. Ferns from a family of ferns can be hybridized. Nothing to do with creationism though. And absolutely no evidence it has anything to do with the Flood as alluded to by the author. Is this the best evidence you have for creation along with the similar snake-breeding study? Is that it? This isn't evidence of creation at all.



Essay.



Essay. You're really not getting this 'science' thing, are you? :pac:

I'm not a scientist. So I seek to point you to their works. I don't know how to tell an essay from a paper, so I'll keep linking until I find something that fits your criteria.

Here's another source:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v1/n1

Sample article:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v1/n1/testing-radiohalos-model

And another source:
http://www.creationbiology.org/content.aspx?page_id=0&club_id=201240

Sample article:
http://www.creationbiology.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=201240&module_id=47758

darjeeling

wolfsbane wrote: »

http://www.grisda.org/origins/54005.pdf
I take you you agree that rapid post-Flood diversification is a part of the creationist argument?

A little old, considering the number of genome sequences we now have to hand.

Wood's idea of altruistic genetic elements makes all sorts of testable predictions about the locations of these divinely-inspired jumping bits of DNA in the genome - and not the few he does identify. Now, we've loads of genomes, so we should see the specific patterns predicted by Wood's AGE notion being borne out again and again. And comparing species within a baramin - say, chimp and gorilla* - should show a different pattern to that seen when comparing species in different baramins - say, chimp and human. Has any of this been checked out by creationists? I've not seen anything.

But, look - here's Todd Charles Wood again (that good solid creation scientist) - on the genomic similarity of human and chimp (pdf here). Oh dear! He seems a little despairing, poor chap:

Todd Charles Wood wrote:

AN ALTERNATIVE CREATIONIST RESPONSE
Having found most popular [creationist] arguments about the human/chimpanzee genome similarity insufficent, I find myself in the unenviable position of devising my own explanation. Since I have none, I will attempt instead to develop some principles that could guide research into this problem.

* Hope I've my baraminology right there. But if not, it's just an example, and you could put in any pair of sequenced co-baraminological genomes.

darjeeling

Pahu wrote: »

When I shared that, I also wondered about the dinosaurs, birds, reptiles, since I had not heard that before. As you point out, others have claimed they aren't found in the Cambrian Explosion. So there is a difference of opinion about that and it may be true. But to accuse me of making those fossils up is erroneous.

Already dealt with here.

Pahu wrote: »

... nearly all animal phyla made their first appearance in the fossil record at essentially the same time, at what is called the "Cambrian Explosion."
.....

Spam - no thanks.

Flamed Diving

wolfsbane wrote: »

I'm not a scientist. So I seek to point you to their works. I don't know how to tell an essay from a paper, so I'll keep linking until I find something that fits your criteria.

I'm not a scientist either, Wolfy. But I can tell the difference. Basically the paper has to end with pages and pages of tables containing data. About 1/3/ of the paper itself. Such as the ones I linked to earlier.

AtomicHorror

wolfsbane wrote: »

I would rather you found the answer, just as I did. But by all means keep looking. That's much better than pretending the spirit world does not exist.

Your belief in the 'Naturalism of the Gaps' is poignant.

It's called Occam's Razor.

wolfsbane wrote: »

That would mean non-creationist science has to explain how energy/matter came to be, or it's not science in your view.

They do have to explain that. They're working on it.

wolfsbane wrote: »

I don't have such exacting standards for science - it is enough that it has to explain what things are, how they work and what laws are involved.

Isn't that what we're doing?

wolfsbane wrote: »

Is the evolution model not science because it refuses to deal with abiogenesis?

You'd have an argument if we weren't doing active research into abiogenesis. But we are. There's a difference between drawing the lines between the remit of a given theory and placing limits on scientific enquiry. Evolution would be bad science if biologists were unwilling to ask where the first life came from, but they're asking that question.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Seems so, if the creation model isn't because it doesn't deal with what happened before Day One of creation.

The creation model encompasses in its scope more or less the entirety of physics, chemistry and biology. It is not a simple analogue of Evolution, but an attempt to explain the universe. It is a parallel of science itself, except that it places a limit on how many questions may be asked. Beyond day one you have to stop asking and just say "God did it". That line is the reason it is not science.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Do all your colleagues share your view on this?

That science must constantly seek answers? I would hope so.

wolfsbane wrote: »

That's a new one for me. I never understood science to deal with the spirit world. I know of psychic research/ghost-hunters and the like - but I thought that was psuedo-science, since in my experience the spirit world cannot be measured by material devices. But if you say so.

Of course this stuff has been studied. It's how we discovered ideometer motion (the principle behind things like the Ouija Board), the placebo effect and all of the psychological tricks that our brains like to play on us.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Using your definitions, the spirit world can be scientifically probed. Specific answers to specific prayers. Imparted knowledge that is not gained by reasoning or material report. These are clear indicators of a spirit world.

If a spirit world exists and interacts with the world in a manner that is observable (ie at all) then yes, of course it may be examined scientifically.

wolfsbane wrote: »

The spirit world is observed - by living things. It cannot be observed by instruments.

A good thing scientists are alive so.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Not at all. Most of it is trickery, I'm sure. But I've lived long enough to know the reality of some of it - both good and evil. God did not forbid us to contact the spirits because they are not real - but because they are only too real, and malicious.

I'm sorry, but there's just no evidence of that. Just a lot of anecdotes.

wolfsbane wrote: »

No, he was quite open about his purpose - at least until is threatened box-office receipts:
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/11/philip_pullman_realizes_underm.html


All part of an excellent yarn. And an excellent yarn is just the vehicle with which to indoctrinate kids. As a story, I found the series lived up to the hype - utterly memorable, complex characters and plot. A really good read.

But again, I don't think Pullman considers his audience to be unable to detect metaphor, which is what I suspect his pantheism is- just a metaphor for the laws of physics.

wolfsbane wrote: »

One certainly needs self-examination to guard against self-deception. But it is not a big problem to the honest enquirer. We are discussing things on this board, in the knowledge that we are not imagining ourselves doing it.

To really test answered prayer, all we need is to be specific enough to rule out naturally occuring uncommon events.

But that needs to be systematically done. We need lots of people, we need different groups, randomisation, controls. Otherwise we cannot say that it works. I'm not expecting a 100% success rate here, but if prayers are really answered it stands to reason that it should be quantifiable.

The Mad Hatter

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a scientific paper should consist of a theory, a method of examining that theory, results and conclusions. Least that's how we did it in secondary school.

darjeeling

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a scientific paper should consist of a theory, a method of examining that theory, results and conclusions. Least that's how we did it in secondary school.

Or failing that, pure entertainment, like Wood's chimp/human meltdown:

Todd Charles Wood wrote:

[...] Robinson and Cavanaugh (1998b) concluded that all extant felids belong to the same baramin and presumably descended from a single pair of cats on the Ark, but Slattery and O’Brien (1998) found distances >5% among felid Zfy genes and >3% among felid Zfx genes. Certainly if felid sequences can vary by that amount, what is to preclude the conclusion that the much lower differences observed between human and chimpanzees genomes indicates their cobaraminic status?

Well, what?

Todd Charles Wood wrote:

Since I do not accept the common ancestry of humans and chimpanzees [...]

Ah - non-acceptance is to preclude it. Well that's ok then.

Todd Charles Wood wrote:

If the fixed nucleotide mismatches between the chimpanzee and human genomes are 1.06%, then the original nucleotide identity could be as high as 99%. At that high level of similarity, perhaps it is not impossible to believe that God created humans and chimpanzees with identical genomes.

So chimps could once have been identical to humans, though with no common ancestry? Surely not multiple instances of human Creation? This is verging on heresy!

Still, our friend regains some composure to conclude with a fine piece of knowing understatment:

Todd Charles Wood wrote:

THE FUTURE OF CREATIONIST GENOMICS
The genome revolution, exciting though it is, is not an obvious victory for creationism.

Sir, I salute you! :pac:

AtomicHorror

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a scientific paper should consist of a theory, a method of examining that theory, results and conclusions. Least that's how we did it in secondary school.

Yep. Though not "theory" as such.

1. Background
2. Hypothesis arising out of the background
3. Method to test/falsify hypothesis
4. Results of the tests
5. Conclusions

The basic format of a primary paper. Not all science is strictly hypothesis-driven, but all evidence contributes to the building of the model, the theory.

The Mad Hatter

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Yep. Though not "theory" as such.

Cool. Wasn't sure about the word theory, given what I've learned since I started reading this thread, but I decided to stick with what I was familiar with.

AtomicHorror

wolfsbane wrote: »

I'm not a scientist. So I seek to point you to their works. I don't know how to tell an essay from a paper, so I'll keep linking until I find something that fits your criteria.

You can be a scientist. It's not difficult at all. It's not about knowledge or training, it's about your philosophical approach to the evidence. The rough format that you're looking for when looking for scientific evidence is pretty much what I posted above. That'll be the primary research- the coalface of science as it were.

AtomicHorror

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Cool. Wasn't sure about the word theory, given what I've learned since I started reading this thread, but I decided to stick with what I was familiar with.

Well, there's a lot of ambiguity around the use of the word, particularly when you get into fields like physics. But mostly its used to mean "model". A collection of laws working together in a single framework. Generally we don't call it theory until it's pretty much as rigorously tested as it can be.

2Scoops

wolfsbane wrote: »

I'm not a scientist. So I seek to point you to their works. I don't know how to tell an essay from a paper, so I'll keep linking until I find something that fits your criteria.

Please do. A few people have chimed in on what a scientific investigation involves. The key thing for you to bear in mind is that a scientific investigation will involve an experiment of test or some sort; an essay will be a story, full of speculation and assumption and no experiment will be performed.

wolfsbane wrote: »

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v1/n1/testing-radiohalos-model

I have no reason to doubt that radiohalos were found in the rocks in question. There is absolutely NO evidence that these are solely related to polonium decay and it is complete nonsense to assume the rocks in question were 'primordial.' Hence, it has nothing to do with creationism.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Sample article:
http://www.creationbiology.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=201240&module_id=47758

A curious effort in statistical navel-gazing that clearly shows that resampling existing (flawed) barmin data adds nothing to the interpretation except to show how subjective the original baramin research was! Thanks wolfsbane - you've just given a great example of how unscientific baraminology is!

Any other gems? Something that actually provides evidence of creation, perhaps? Or maybe something disproving evolution? Keep trying, sport!

AtomicHorror

Some data contradicting evolution would be key really. Though it wouldn't automatically be supportive of creation.

robindch

wolfsbane wrote: »

Rubbishing other's work because you don't agree with it's conclusions, rather than disagreeing respectfully. It is dishonest propaganda, not scholarly criticism.

Talking of dishonest propaganda, you've reminded me about the last bit of Ken Ham's "statement of faith":

Ham wrote:

By definition, no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.

That's really quite cool: Ken has (a) defined himself to be right and everybody else to be wrong if it suits him and (b) implied that a description of an event is more reliable guide to an event than the event itself.

Way to go Ken.

wolfsbane wrote: »

I'm not a scientist. So I seek to point you to their works. I don't know how to tell an essay from a paper, so I'll keep linking until I find something that fits your criteria.

I'm fascinated at this point. You've been contributing to this thread for enough time to have finished a degree-level university course in evolutionary biology.

Genuine question here -- how on earth have you managed to learn nothing in all that time?

Soul Winner

AtomicHorror wrote: »

You can be a scientist. It's not difficult at all. It's not about knowledge or training, it's about your philosophical approach to the evidence.

Did you really mean this? I thought science was the study of the behavior of what can be observed by the senses the findings of which either verifies or disproves any given hypotheses? Surely a purely philosophical approach to evidence breaks these rules? Can your philosophical approach to the evidence be proven to be true by empirical study, experimentation, i.e. the scientific method?

Zombrex

Soul Winner wrote: »

I thought science was the study of the behavior of what can be observed by the senses the findings of which either verifies or disproves any given hypotheses?

Science is the scientific method (what you just said isn't the scientific method by the way ). You follow that you are doing science, doesn't matter if you have no qualifications at all. You don't and you aren't, no matter how many qualifications you have (someone should really tell that to the Creationist "scientists")

Soul Winner wrote: »

Surely a purely philosophical approach to evidence breaks these rules?

The rules are a philosophical approach to the evidence.

Science is a philosophical methodology. Scientists have thought about the best ways to go about learning about stuff (through the philosophy of science) and the modern scientific method is what they came up with.

Thinks like falsifiability and repeatability. All these are philosophical approaches to learning about something.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Can your philosophical approach to the evidence be proven to be true by empirical study, experimentation, i.e. the scientific method?

I think perhaps you are not quite following. Atomic doesn't mean you sit around thinking about a rock using philosophy.

The philosophy is applied to the method you then use to examine the rock, not the rock itself. Through the philosophy of science you come up with the scientific method, and with the scientific method you examine something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science

And science never proves anything. That is possibly the first thing to learn.

Zombrex

robindch wrote: »

Genuine question here -- how on earth have you managed to learn nothing in all that time?

A more interesting question for me is how does someone who admits such ignorance of this subject still know we are all wrong?

Soul Winner

Wicknight wrote: »

Science is the scientific method (what you just said isn't the scientific method by the way ). You follow that you are doing science, doesn't matter if you have no qualifications at all. You don't and you aren't, no matter how many qualifications you have (someone should really tell that to the Creationist "scientists")


The rules are a philosophical approach to the evidence.

Science is a philosophical methodology. Scientists have thought about the best ways to go about learning about stuff (through the philosophy of science) and the modern scientific method is what they came up with.

Thinks like falsifiability and repeatability. All these are philosophical approaches to learning about something.



I think perhaps you are not quite following. Atomic doesn't mean you sit around thinking about a rock using philosophy.

The philosophy is applied to the method you then use to examine the rock, not the rock itself. Through the philosophy of science you come up with the scientific method, and with the scientific method you examine something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science

And science never proves anything. That is possibly the first thing to learn.

So let me get this straight. The philosophy that produced the method is to be bowed to without any question even though that philosophy cannot be proven by the method it produced?

Zombrex

Soul Winner wrote: »

So let me get this straight. The philosophy that produced the method is to be bowed to without any question even though that philosophy cannot be proven by the method it produced?

Ummm .. what?

Firstly by nature of being a philosophy the philosophy of science isn't without question, it is in fact questioned all the time and improved upon (did you read the wikipedia article)

Secondly when has a philosophy (on anything) ever been "proven"

Thirdly, science doesn't prove things so your question makes very little sense, why would you scientifically prove the scientific method when the scientific method says you don't scientifically prove things?

AtomicHorror

Soul Winner wrote: »

Did you really mean this? I thought science was the study of the behavior of what can be observed by the senses the findings of which either verifies or disproves any given hypotheses?

That's the practise of science, at least partly. The process of deriving a falsifiable (not provable) hypothesis, testing it and then refining the current theory based on the outcome. Or if the evidence demands it, throwing the theory in the bin. But it's more than that too. It's about knowing why we need to be systematic in this manner, and indeed need to go further than this and create systems of external (and competitive) review, meta-analysis and meta-meta-analysis (and we can go further there if we feel a bit wacky). It's about knowing that you brain is just not built for any of this and how to get around that. The scientific method is a set of tools, a philosophy, a system designed to account for the easily observable fact that you can't reliably trust yourself unaided when it comes to observation and model building. Plus it can help when we study stuff that is not intuitively understandable to humans, such as 16-dimensional space and other brain melting stuff like that.

Wicknight's explained it better perhaps. I'm rather tired.

Soul Winner

Wicknight wrote: »

Ummm .. what?

Firstly by nature of being a philosophy the philosophy of science isn't without question, it is in fact questioned all the time and improved upon (did you read the wikipedia article)

Secondly when has a philosophy (on anything) ever been "proven"

Thirdly, science doesn't prove things so your question makes very little sense, why would you scientifically prove the scientific method when the scientific method says you don't scientifically prove things?

Doesn't prove anything? Gotcha, thanks

AtomicHorror

Soul Winner wrote: »

So let me get this straight. The philosophy that produced the method is to be bowed to without any question even though that philosophy cannot be proven by the method it produced?

Of course not. The core tenet of the philosophy of science, the only piece of "faith" if you like, is that the universe has rules that we can understand. Except that this is testable of course. If that turns out to be untrue by observation, then the philosophy of science is dead in the water. So far, we seem to be doing just fine.

AtomicHorror

Soul Winner wrote: »

Doesn't prove anything? Gotcha

In science, a hypothesis, law or theory is supported by evidence or contradicted by it. Support does not equal proof because there may be conditions in which the support is broken. Take Newtons laws. They work fine until you consider certain situations. The evidence that supported it did just that, but it never proved it. Proof suggests an absolute and we never assume that a theory cannot be superseded. Newtons laws are still correct within their context, but have been superseded by Einstein. The evidence supports him, but we don't say that relativity is proven. Proof is something used in law and mathematics.

A lot of this comes from work by the likes of Karl Popper, but as influential as they have been on the scientific method, even his philosophies of science have been questioned and modified.

2Scoops

Soul Winner wrote: »

Doesn't prove anything? Gotcha, thanks

It can certainly disprove things, though.